


Virulent

by EllaBesmirched (El_Bell)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Convict Kylo Ren, Correctional Officer Phasma, Doctor Hux, Explicit Sexual Content, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, Multi, Other characters will show up later, Sci-fi with some fantasy elements, Zombies, genre-typical violence-- that genre being kicking the shit out of some zombies, neither is hux, or phasma, they are all terrible fucking people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-22 11:20:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13763046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/El_Bell/pseuds/EllaBesmirched
Summary: A prison cell is literally the worst place to be when the zombie apocalypse breaks out.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am posting this against all my better judgement because honestly, I love it and Kyluxtrashcompactor in enabling me (AND WAS AMAZING AND BETA'D IT FOR ME TONIGHT ON SHORT NOTICE). 
> 
> HERE YOU GUYS HAVE SOME ZOMBIES. 
> 
> Two notes:
> 
> 1.) I'll probably update this a little more slowly than I usually like as I work to update and finish other stories, so subscribe if you like it so you don't forget about it! :D?  
> 2.) The Kylo/Phasma stuff is mostly in the past, but I can't totally guarantee I won't write a few scenes here and there. There is a non-explicit one in this chapter. Also, I've literally never written a het sex scene and if the fancy strikes me I might try? I know this pairing is not everyone's cup o tea, so I'll put tags at the end of the chapter for any Kylo/Phasma scenes. But don't worry, the main focus is def Kylux! Always Kylux forever (help me.)
> 
> ALSO-- I should mention, Kylo is a VERY BAD MAN in this. And Phasma is a VERY BAD WOMAN. Their relationship has some DEFINITE dubcon overtones, and expect Kylo to fling around some verbal abuse, including a few nasty slurs for women. :x

The first time, he'd expected it to feel like bashing in a melon. He'd heard that before, had seen on TV that the closest approximation to the density of a human skull occurring in nature was a watermelon.

It wasn't like that though. The sound and feel of it was closer to memories he had of destroying the neighbors' jack-o-lanterns on mischief night, or smashing his family's own in the street two weeks after Halloween, when they'd started to stink and rot.

The first time, he'd used his hands, had slammed the softening skull into the cinder block of his cell wall.

His cellmate had been screaming for hours. There had been a riot at breakfast, and they'd locked everyone-- even those who hadn't been involved-- back in their cells as punishment. Winston had come back with a nasty bite on his arm. Kylo had seen worse. Kylo had done worse.

The screaming had been coming on and off for days, all over the complex. The guards kept hauling men away, whispering to each other about some virus. Eventually the infirmary filled up. Eventually they just let the men scream.

In hindsight, Kylo understood why they'd all been locked in their cells that day. In hindsight, he understood why no guard had come for him after he killed his cellmate.

The screaming was awful. Kylo had growled at him to shut the fuck up, had threatened him with every bodily injury he could come up with, but it hadn't helped at all. And as the screaming in his own cell dragged on, it started to appear through all the cells on this block and on every other block too, so Kylo could hear it everywhere, all around him.

The day limped by. The guards never came to let them out for lunch. And then dinner. And then breakfast the next day. Kylo ate most of his own ramen and stole the flavor packets from Winston's stash to save for later; the man didn't notice at all. Once, Kylo drank the water out of the back of the toilet reservoir but it tasted like rust.

When his cell finally went quiet, an awful chill crept along Kylo's skin. He turned and looked at the other bunk and found Winston staring at him. His eyes had the same predatory hyper-focus of a mountain lion Kylo had encountered once on a hunting trip with his father and he squared up before he knew what he was doing.

Then-- nothing. His mind was a complete blank, and that more than anything else told him that he'd come closer to dying than he ever had in his life. His memories picked up in the instant before he slammed his cellmate’s head into the cinder block, once, twice, again, again, _again,_ until it was a pulpy mess all over his hands and under his nails and the bastard finally stopped moving. Kylo was breathing hard in the odd little quiet that surrounded him. His hands were shaking.

His blood ran cold when he saw what he'd done; he'd killed men before, but always in the shadows, always when he knew the cameras had been turned off. And never had he done something so… sloppy.

"He came at me!" Kylo screamed suddenly, whirling toward the camera that faced into their cell. "You got all that, that mother fucker came at me, that was fucking self defense!"

There was no indication that anyone heard.

By that night, Kylo was screaming himself. Screaming for guards. Screaming every curse he could think of. He was running out of food and the body in his cell was already starting to stink like week old meat.

And he was thirsty.

He started to swim in and out of consciousness, the incessant screaming acting as horrible orchestration to his nightmares. He didn't know how much time had passed when he saw someone come shambling down the hallway.

Kylo was totally exhausted, sagging against the bars and positioned as far as he could get from the rapidly rotting body in the corner. He had his hands wrapped around the bars of his cell, his face pressed against them.

"Hey! Hey, hey, let me out of here! There's a fucking body in here and I--"

The lurching figure stumbled into the dim half light (the power had gone out and the generators had kicked on hours ago) and Kylo realized there was something wrong with him. He was covered in blood; it stained his CO uniform and his lips-- _fuck,_ his lips were peeling down to the bone, dangling from his chin like half chewed food.

Kylo drew back in shock, but the CO had already seen him. He lunged, slavering like a rabid dog, at Kylo’s cell, hands grasping through the bars and Kylo said, "What the _fuck--"_

With a sick thud, the body suddenly stiffened and fell. CO Phasma stood behind him, baton in hand. She was covered in blood, slick with it, and Kylo gaped at her in pure shock as she stomped the other officer's head into the concrete.

"Jesus Christ."

"Solo?" she said in shock, lifting her head. "Shit, you're still kicking?"

"Fuck right, I am, what the shit’s going on out there? Get me out of here, I've been locked in for days."

Phasma snorted under her breath. "Yeah, right."

"Fuck you mean, yeah right? Open the goddamn door, Phas. I'm gonna dehydrate in here."

Phasma pointed at the toilet. "Should last you long enough."

"Fuck you!" Then her words actually registered. "Long enough for what?"

"He bite you before you smashed his skull in?" She jerked her head toward the mess Kylo had made of his cellmate.

"Tried to," Kylo said defensively. "I had to kill him, he kept coming at me. Even after I broke his arms. It's all on tape, alright?"

Phasma snorted again and wiped her blood stained hair out of her eyes. "That's the last thing you gotta worry about right now, Kylo."

"What the fuck is going on?" Kylo demanded again, finally standing back up. "You just killed a CO."

"Yeah, I don't think anyone will care. Shit's gone to hell out here, inmate. A few dead COs and a jail full of dangerous felons is the last thing on everyone's minds."

"Speak plain, Phas," Kylo deadpanned. "What the fuck is wrong with everyone?"

"It's a virus, they think," Phasma told him, crossing her arms across her ample chest like they were gossiping about which inmates she's just caught fucking in the showers. "First comes a fever, then the headaches-- makes grown men scream like little girls it hurts so much-- then they go crazy and start trying to _eat_ people."

"You're full of shit," Kylo replied automatically.

Phasma shrugged. "You murder Winston there for fun then?" Kylo gaped at her. "It's spreading all over the whole damn city. The guards all left, most of the inmates are dead or dying, or locked into their cells where they can't reach anyone else to hurt. Want to know the craziest fucking thing? You gotta bash their heads in to get 'em to stop coming. It's like they can't feel pain. Like nothing else hurts 'em."

Kylo only stared. If he hadn't seen it with his own two eyes, he'd never have believed her.

"You gotta let me out of here, Phas."

She pursed her lips at him. "Now that's a fucking moral dilemma. Who's more of a public menace: you or the infected?"

"Hey, fuck you," Kylo drawled. "You can't just leave me to die in here, that's cruel and unusual and I know my fucking rights, alright? Open the door."

"No," Phasma taunted. "That _used_ to be cruel and unusual. Back when we actually had a _government."_

 _"_ What?" Kylo hissed. "What do you mean--"

"I told you, everything's gone to hell. No one gives a fuck about you degenerates. We had _orders_ to leave you all locked up and get the hell out of Dodge. The only reason I came back is--"

"Your stash," Kylo answered, throwing his head back.

"Yeah. Seems like a metric fuck ton of dope'll have a pretty sweet going rate in the apocalypse, know what I'm saying?"

"And you call me the degenerate," Kylo drawled.

Phasma shrugged.

"I'll help you get your shit if you open the door," Kylo wheedled. With Phasma, there was always a quid pro quo.

"Strip," Phasma demanded, suddenly all business.

" _What?"_ Kylo demanded incredulously. "At a time like this--"

"We're not fucking, inmate," Phasma snapped. "I'm not letting you out of there until I know that thing didn't bite you. Strip."

Kylo scowled at her, but with short, jerky motions, he tugged off his filthy, bloodstained orange jumpsuit, the A-shirt underneath, and finally, when she just raised her eyebrows at him, his shoes, socks, and white prison issue briefs. He held out his arms and lifted his chin furiously.

"You've been lifting more, Solo?" she teased.

"Bitch," Kylo spat.

"I can still leave, you know."

"Yeah, you won't. Long as we're stuck in here, you'd rather have me between you and whoever isn't locked in a cell."

"What's that?" she asked, jerking her chin toward Kylo's arm. Kylo stepped closer to the bars and held out his wrist.

"He tried to bite me. Didn't break the skin. Just a bruise, see?"

"Yeah, alright, put your clothes back on."

While Kylo tugged his uniform back on, Phasma fished a key ring out of her belt and unlocked the cell door. All these maximum security cells had physical locks that could be manipulated in case the electronic ones failed. Kylo didn’t bother wondering how Phasma had ended up with a key; her sticky fingers always seemed to find useful little tools.

She kept her distance when he ( _finally!)_ stepped out into the hall. An intoxicating little thrill went through him then. Phasma wasn't scared of anybody. She ran this prison right under the warden's nose and she'd been the only person-- CO, inmate, or otherwise-- to ever have Kylo under her thumb. Of course, it wasn't as if he didn't _enjoy_ being under that thumb. Getting to screw a CO who smelled like lemongrass was a helluva lot more appealing than his usual fare.

Still, she was scared of him, now that her veneer of power was starting to rub off. There were no cameras anymore, nothing to keep him from bashing _her_ head into the wall if she pissed him off enough. And she knew him well enough to know he’d do it if he really wanted to. She was either very desperate, or she trusted him marginally more than any of the other thugs they'd locked in here with him.

Kylo bent down and plucked the stun baton from the waist of the dead CO. Phasma stared at him as he tested it in his palm, eyes sharp and calculating. It was the first time he'd had a weapon in his hand that he hadn't made from dictionary pages and toilet water in ten years.

"Let's go."

Kylo led the way down the hall of this block, and found every cell occupied by a monster. They threw themselves against the bars, gasping and drooling, and tried to force their way through to reach Phasma and Kylo as they walked. Only the cell at the very end of the hall was occupied by actual people.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey, Solo! CO, you gotta get us out of here!"

Phasma drew up short and Kylo turned to stare into the cell.

Bailey and Knox shared this one. Knox was sitting on his bed with his head in his hands, but Bailey was reaching through the cell, trying to grab Kylo's sleeve. The eye that wasn't a mangled mess of burnt scar tissue was wide with fear. Kylo grinned at him, and saw some of that fear flicker to be replaced with pure loathing. But he still didn't pull his hand back.

"What's wrong with him?" Phasma demanded, jerking her head toward Knox while Kylo continued to leer at Bailey.

"Head hurts real bad. We don't have nothing to eat in here, CO, you gotta let us out!"

"He's gonna have something to eat real soon," Kylo replied, pointing at Knox with his baton. Then he looked back at Phasma. "Come on."

He started to pass, but Bailey latched onto his sleeve, started screaming about leaving them locked in here to die. Kylo yanked him into the bars of his own cell so hard his head collided with the metal with an ungodly clang. Bailey dropped entirely limp to the floor. "Put your fucking hands on me! One eye wasn't enough, was it, fucking rat?"

"CO Phasma," Bailey complained weakly. "You can't--"

"Yeah, she can. Come on," Kylo snapped again. "You want to worry about him or you want to worry about yourself?"

Phasma shrugged and followed Kylo into the next hall while Bailey bellowed insults. Wordlessly, Knox started to scream.

"That eye was you?" Phasma scoffed with a grim chuckle. "Nasty piece of work."

Kylo chuckled. "Yeah. Fucker stole a picture of my little cousin." Phasma scowled. "Figured he could do with one less eye. Lucky I didn’t get both. Scumbag."

"Like you're any better--"

"Hey!" Kylo paused and shoved her against the wall with one hand flat on her chest. "You know damn right I am."

Phasma shoved him away, eyes flashing. Kylo had never done anything like that to her before; the CO uniform meant enough, combined with her reputation, her habit of making people who pissed her off utterly miserable, that even Kylo had never dared step to her before now. The tables were turning, and she didn’t like it.

"Keep your hands off me, inmate."

They considered each other briefly before they both turned and started walking again.

"Thought your family didn't talk to you," Phasma said finally. “Who sent you pictures?”

Kylo shrugged. "She had some kinda pen pal project thing for school. I don't think anyone realized who she was writing."

Phasma snorted in disgust. "Hope they stopped her."

"Yeah. They did." He shrugged. "I mean, I assume."

"You wrote her back?"

Kylo shrugged. He'd always liked Rey. The rest of the family could rot for all he cared, but little Rey had always been happy to see him. She was ten when he went in. Old enough to know she shouldn't be writing him, but still young enough to believe him when he'd lied and told her he hadn't done it. She'd been the only one he'd bothered lying to in the first place.

Well. Aside from his lawyers and his judge and the jury.

They passed a few more cells like Knox and Bailey’s. They kept on walking. Most of the cells were full of infected anyway. The few they encountered in the halls, quickly dispatched with Kylo’s baton, were all COs.

“This ain’t so bad,” Kylo drawled as he unstuck his baton from a skull and shook it to dislodge the gore. CO Thompson had it coming anyway, he mused, nudging the body with a boot. He liked to get rougher with the inmates than was strictly needed. Kylo had had more than one cracked rib thanks to him.

“Yeah, that’s cause we locked you fuckers up before we left. I’m taking us around the infirmary, cause I imagine it’s all gone to shit there. And outside is a fucking war zone. You’ll see. Come on.”

Phasma’s stash was bigger than Kylo had expected it to be. Drugs--mostly dope and weed, with a little meth thrown in for good measure-- piles of cash, pocket knives, batons, and three hand guns. They stuffed their pockets-- Phasma didn’t even give him shit when he grabbed some of the cash.

“What, you trying to stay clean, Solo?” she taunted when she realized he’d gone for all the blades and none of the drugs.

“Do I look like a goddamn meth head?”

Phasma laughed. “Guess not. Here, carry this.” She thrust a bag stuffed with bricks of heroin into his hands and Kylo scowled at her as he slung it over his shoulder.

“You should be carrying this shit; leave my hands free.”

“Come on,” she demanded, ignoring his complaint entirely.

They went back the way they’d come; Kylo stopped at his cell to grab the book he’d been reading, and a few of his favorites after that, and all the ramen flavor packets he’d stolen off Winston. The last part was reflexive; he hadn’t even realized he was stuffing them into his pockets until Phasma was openly laughing at him. But it never occurred to him to leave them; that shit was gold in here.

Phasma had pulled her Jeep right up to the caged-in front gate.

Kylo stopped at the threshold, hand on the metal.

“What are you doing? Move.”

He hadn’t crossed this point in ten years. It hit him all at once, was so totally overwhelming that when he looked down at his hands, he found them shaking.

“Jesus fuck,” Phasma cursed, shoving by him and stalking to her Jeep. “I’m leaving your ass.”

Kylo moved then, lurched for the passenger side door and threw himself inside. Phasma kicked the machine into gear and Kylo caught sight of himself in the passenger side mirror. He was drenched in blood and bits of skull and brain matter, but under it all, his skin was stark white.

Phasma skidded back onto the road, barreled over an infected CO like it was nothing, and then glanced at him. “Put your seatbelt on.”

The jittery click of metal on metal as he tried to line up the buckles made her look at him again.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Kylo shook his head. “Lotta. Lotta. Air. Out here.”

Phasma rolled her eyes. “Fucking felons,” she muttered under her breath.

“Where are we going?” Kylo demanded when he was sure he could speak without his voice shaking. Most men had weeks to think about when they were getting out. Or at least some indication that they might. Kylo had known the second they closed his cell door that he wasn’t getting out, ever again. And if he did, he’d be _old._ Falling apart at the seams.

But here he was, ten years later, speeding away from the hell hole he’d called home in a hard top Jeep Wrangler with blood on his hands.

“Away from the city,” Phasma answered. “There’s supposed to be some kinda checkpoint set up leading into Hosnian County. I heard shit’s safe there. We’re about an hour out. You better change or they’ll never let you in.”

“Change?”

“I’ve got sweat pants in the back. Should fit you. Good thing we’re both big mother fuckers.”

Kylo twisted around and found Phasma’s back seat filled to bursting with luggage, guns, and food. She yelped in protest when he unclipped his seatbelt and lunged into the back. She had Cherry Coke, _real_ Cherry Coke, and cans of spaghetti-os and _fresh oranges_ \--

“Hey, you’re gonna make yourself sick.”

“Fuck you,” Kylo replied around a mouthful of soda and sun dried tomatoes; he’d found a whole bag just sitting on top of the canned goods. “You try living off that bullshit for ten years. It’s inhumane.”

“Please,” she scoffed. “You of all people want to talk to me about inhumane.”

Kylo ate another tomato, cracked a second can of warm soda, and started digging through Phasma’s bags for a pair of sweatpants.

 

Over the next hour, she told him how it had started. The first incident, by everyone’s best guess, had happened about two weeks ago. A family had rushed their screaming son into the ER, where no one could figure out what was wrong with him. He bit a nurse, they said, and she went home, and called out sick the next day. Headache. Fever.

It spread out in ripples from that point, trickled into the prison, into all the government buildings, the schools.

“I had to hole up for a few days in my apartment once shit really hit the fan,” Phasma explained. “That was the day of the riot, the day they sent us all home. They rushed us out and I couldn’t get any of my shit.”

The prison complex was out in the boonies, well enough away from the city that there was nothing but corn fields surrounding it, and everyone could pretend it didn’t exist.

“You’re nuts for coming back,” Kylo told her.

“This was nothing compared to getting out of the city. Figured after that, the prison would be easy. Fish in a barrel.”

“Good thing you drive an SUV,” Kylo muttered as Phasma once again jerked the jeep off the road to drive around an accident that had been left in the street.

“Please, I stole this shit from my neighbor,” Phasma replied. “My Harley isn’t exactly ideal transport during the zombie apocalypse. And it’s not like he’ll be using it anyway,” she added grimly.

“We just passed into Hosnian,” Kylo said sharply, sitting up. “I remember, I grew up like twenty minutes from here.”

Phasma slowed down and peered around. The roads were just as deserted as they’d always been. There was smoke rising in the distance. Kylo could see a few lurchers through the plate glass windows of the local pharmacy.

“There’s nothing here,” Phasma spat, slamming her hands against the wheel. “Fucking shit.”

“Now what?”

“I dunno, you grew up here. Is there some place we could hole up?”

“I. I dunno,” Kylo said hesitantly.

“Come on, Solo, spit it out!”

“I. I mean. Look, I know some places that might. That might work, but if _anyone’s home_ they’re not gonna be thrilled to see me.”

“No one’s gonna be thrilled to see you. Just tell me where to go. We don’t want to be out here when it gets dark.”

“What happens when it gets dark?”

“Trust me, it’s bad news.”

“Shit,” Kylo cursed. “Uh. Fuck where are we. Take a. Take a--”

“Solo!”

“It’s been ten years, okay, fuck you! Take a left.”

 

Thirty minutes later, Phasma whistled as she turned the Jeep onto a gravel drive and a huge stone fortress of a house came into view. “Who lives here?”

Kylo crossed his arms over his chest and peered sulkily out of the window. “I did.”

Kylo watched Phasma’s white blond brows rise in the reflection on the window. “Seriously?”

“Big fucking deal.”

Phasma parked the Jeep and no one stepped out onto the front porch to greet them. They both loaded up with guns from the back, and covered each other as they crept up the steps. The property, about two acres of land, surrounded on all sides by woods that the Organa-Solos also owned, was totally silent. Kylo couldn’t even hear any birds or cicadas in the trees and usually they were so loud this time of year, a man had to shout to be heard.

The door was locked. Phasma raised the butt of her gun to smash in a window but Kylo stopped her.

“There used to be--” he grunted, dropping to his knees. “A fake floorboard with an extra--” Kylo wrenched the board up, and grinning, plucked the key out. “Extra key. Dad was always losing his.”

“Uh huh,” Phasma drawled, giving him a _look._ Kylo rolled his eyes and opened the door.

Some furniture was new, some was old. The TV had changed and the layout.

It still smelled the same.

“Nice place,” Phasma said, peering around. “Elevated, so we can see them coming. We should barricade some of these doors though.”

“Yeah,” Kylo grunted. “Let’s. Let’s check for infected.”

He refused to admit how relieved he was to find the place totally empty.

“You skipped this room,” Phasma told him as he checked the last room on the third floor. Kylo scowled.

“It’s empty.”

“How do you know?”

Kylo crossed his arms over his chest and had no choice but to let her turn the knob.

It was squeaky with disuse. The entire room was covered in a thick layer of dust. As loath as he’d been to even come close to the door when it was closed, now that it was open, he felt himself drawn inside like a leaf caught in a storm drain. Under the layers of dust, he could smell the deodorant he’d worn every day of his life up until the day they’d locked him away. His books were all where he’d left them, his posters and pictures, his video games, the model planes he’d made with Han when he was a kid. A handmade birthday card from Rey, a painting his high school girlfriend had given him, an essay he’d actually aced on medieval broadsword technique for his senior history class.

He’d assumed-- hoped even-- that they’d turned the room into an office, or a home gym, or, fuck, a fucking storage closet.

“They must really love you,” Phasma said quietly, voice sharp and pointed.

Kylo shoved her, _hard,_ into the closet door, hard enough that he saw her eyes flash with fury and fear at once, hard enough that the door buckled under her weight. “You keep your _goddamn mouth shut,”_ he hissed. “Or I’ll shut it for you.”

“You don’t scare me, Solo,” she spat, pushing him back; she was stronger than most men.

“Then you’re fucking stupid,” Kylo told her.

The expression in her eyes told him she didn’t entirely disagree.

They left the room. Kylo shut the door and didn’t open it again.

 

The power was out but the water still worked. Kylo fished a candle out from under the guest bathroom sink and stripped before he turned the shower on. The water smelled different here, clean and fresh instead of dull and metallic. He had to rummage through the closet and all the vanity drawers to find soap, but once he did, he found shampoo, and conditioner too. He stared at the latter in total disbelief while the room filled up with steam.

The water was far too hot. It burned his skin, made him feel like he was going to boil alive, but he let it scald him anyway. He stood under the stream for one minute, two, three, waiting for the rush of cold that would signal this luxury had come to an end, but it never did, and after five minutes or thirty, he hit his knees hard enough to thud. The water was just a little cooler down here. Tolerable, even.

He heard the door open and something like relief swept through him.

Phasma tore back the curtain and peered down at him. “Are you alright?”

He could tell she’d been about to say something scathing, but the sight of him huddled in a ball in the bathtub must have startled her.

“Fine,” he choked out.

“What the fuck, Solo. Are you _crying?”_

“I’m all wet, Phasma.”

“ _Jesus,”_ she hissed, sticking her hand under the stream and then yanking it back. She immediately crossed to the other side of the tub and turned the water tap. The temperature started to fall to a more human degree. “You’re gonna hurt yourself, dumbass.”

Kylo blinked the water out of his eyes and stared into his palms. He heard a zipper, fabric crinkling. Phasma slid into the tub and sat across from him in the candlelight, her knees drawn up to her chest and the fall of water on Kylo’s skin misting onto hers. He’d never seen her totally naked before, the nature of their relationship being what it was. They stole time in supply closets; they didn’t have the luxury of disrobing.

Her body was unreal. Her pale skin all covered with downy blonde hair, her trim waist and round hips and huge breasts, were all intoxicatingly feminine. But the muscles in her arms and her thighs and her back all rippled whenever she moved and it was impossible for Kylo to forget that she was just as tall as him and very nearly just as strong. He focused on the little pink lines in her knees, filling up with misty water that trickled down her unshaven legs, and felt some of the tightness in his chest ease a little.

“You worried about your family?” she asked scathingly.

Kylo scoffed wordlessly. Such a ridiculous question didn’t require more of a response.

“What,” she pressed sarcastically. “Forget how to shower without thirty other men watching you?”

She waited for Kylo to make some snide comment back, but he just kept on staring at her knees.

“We really fuck you guys up, don’t we?” she asked wryly.

Kylo shrugged. “I found conditioner,” he finally said softly, holding out the bottle.

Phasma eyed it with the same kind of pity she might spare for a dying spider twitching in a pool of insecticide.

“I could have gotten you conditioner, Ben.”

“Not the point,” he muttered, letting the half empty bottle clatter into the tub. He’d wasted money on the conditioner the commissary carried once; it made his head itch for days after so he traded it for deodorant. After that, he tried a handful of baby oil and that was a little better. It smelled good, even if it made him look like a grease ball from a bad mobster movie. Over time, he’d stopped caring if he shaved or not, if the scar across his face, given to him his very first week behind bars, faded with time or not, if his nails were clean and trim. But after all this time, he still couldn’t stand to cut his hair short, or let it grow greasy or dry or tangled. Funny, the little vanities he still clung to.

Phasma sighed in amusement and pity and maybe even surprise and stood up, nudging Kylo out of the stream of water so she could stand under it. Kylo let himself be pushed back toward the faucet and then leaned his forehead against her thighs. Her toes wiggled against his crossed shins. She patted him once on the head, and then started to wash her hair.

Kylo stared at the pink rivulets of water pooling between her feet and wondered if he’d ever feel normal in a shower alone again.

He felt sick when he got out-- overheated and weak. Something in his face must have shown it because as Phasma toweled her hair, she rolled her eyes and said, “Idiot. You better go find some real food. What have you had today? Coke and oranges?”

“Ramen,” Kylo muttered with a slight bite to his voice. It was all he’d had for days, trapped in his cell.

“Well, fuel up. We’re gonna need it.”

He found old clothes that had been his, before. They were tight around the chest and bicep and thigh, but they would do. He fed himself from his parent’s mostly empty pantry-- canned chili and corn chips. Fresh water. They barricaded all the doors except the front and camped out on the great room floor, eyes on the huge windows that peered out into the front yard. Kylo was exhausted, all of a sudden, and as he let his head fall back against the sofa, Phasma threaded her hands into his mostly dry hair. When he turned lazily to look at her, she drew her hand back, a sheepish expression on her face.

Kylo closed his eyes again and felt his lips turn up-- he’d caught his own reflection in the window earlier. He’d looked different, without the oil weighing his hair down. More robust. Cleaner. Almost cared for. His mother had always told him women loved a man with nice hair. And he’d even found an old razor and shaved his whole face for the first time in maybe five years.

He rolled his head back toward Phasma and gave her his most lascivious grin, the one he’d learned early on in his first year and usually saved for new inmates he was trying to fuck with. Few things seemed to freak out a newly minted con more than six foot three inches and two hundred pounds of solid muscle grinning at them like a hungry dog leering at a mid rare steak. That grin, more than any heads he cracked behind closed doors, had earned Kylo a reputation as someone not to be fucked with. And while he’d die before he ever laid a hand on a man or woman who didn’t want it, he didn’t particularly mind a prison full of the worst criminals across the nearest five states thinking he would if the fancy took him. Kept people from getting too bold (in more ways than one) with him.

Phasma snorted at him. “Creep.”

Tired as he was, Kylo still made his decision very quickly. He leaned over with a sharp little movement and sucked her earlobe between his teeth before she could shove him away. He'd never bothered with this kind of contact before, really had no idea what she liked when they weren't trying to squeeze two orgasms into ten minutes spent shoved in a dark dusty corner. They usually failed and it was never Phasma who was left wanting.

They fucked all spread out on the great room floor-- Kylo wasn’t sure he could have handled her like this, _and_ the soft comfort of an expensive mattress or sofa too, so when she suggested they move, he told her to shut up and do something useful with her lips. She didn’t of course. He’d never expected her to. Even with the world falling down around them, the idea of Phasma with an inmate’s cock in her mouth was still just about the most impossible thing Kylo could think of.

 

The sound of shattering glass woke Kylo from a sound sleep and he stood up before he’d opened his eyes. When his brain caught up with his body, he almost thought he was dreaming. A lurcher was hanging in the broken window, shards of glass digging into its skin and cutting it to shreds and it didn’t even notice. Kylo counted at least three more all straining to climb in behind it.

“Phasma!”

“I know!”

He was only marginally aware of her taking aim with one of her hand guns; he’d already snapped out the baton and was lurching forward. He’d bashed the thing’s skull in before Phasma had finished clicking off the safety. He knocked it back out of the window, shoving it into the monsters behind it, and before they could recover and come at him again, he’d yanked the nearby bookshelf sideways and blocked the window. Phasma dropped her gun and rushed forward to help him steady it; it was huge and the fact that he’d moved it on his own at all was a testament to the adrenaline surging in his chest.

“That won’t hold for long,” she panted. “Where did they _come_ from?”

“What day did everything go tits up?” Kylo asked grimly, turning on his heel and heading for the back door.

“Uh. Sunday and Monday, mainly. Why?”

Kylo jerked his chin toward the door. “There’s a church about three miles down the road.” The infected had been wearing their Sunday best.

“Christ.”

“Cover the door,” Kylo commanded automatically. “I’ll see if we’ve got another way out.”

They did not have another way out. When Kylo peered through the blinds near the back entrance, he saw a whole swarm of the things lurching and shambling and stumbling through his parent’s perfectly manicured back lawn.

“No good,” he bellowed as he pounded back past Phasma and raced up the stairs. “Backyard’s fucking infested. We need to get out of here now.”

“No shit,” she yelped back. The bookshelf was starting to shudder and shake. “Fuck are you doing?”

“Checking the armory,” Kylo called as he raced up the second flight of stairs to the top floor and careened into Han’s study. They’d left their own weapons in the car; Kylo and Phasma had only carried in one pistol, one hunting rifle, and two batons between them, and the ammo that was in the guns. It was a stupid oversight, and if they survived this, one Kylo would never make again.

Han’s study was cleaned out. Kylo found only a single cheap handgun and a torn box of assorted bullets, and he couldn’t help but think as he pounded back down the hallway, that they were totally fucked.

He ground to a stop at the top of the stairs, realizing with a burst of inspiration so powerful it made him freeze that everything in his old room had been exactly where he’d left it.

When Kylo came careening back down the stairs two minutes later, Phasma openly gaped at him.

“Where did you get a goddamn _sword?”_

“Hold this,” Kylo demanded, shoving a long, heavy square case into her arms. She grunted and swung it over her shoulders while Kylo shrugged into the single backpack they’d carried in from the car. She was weighed down with his case, and the hunting rifle, but she could still aim the pistol.

“Cover me!”

And then he kicked through the front door.

There were five of them in all, all trying to get through the weak point at the window, so when Kylo burst through the front door, he had the element of surprise. And these things, it seemed, could be surprised.

Before they could finish turning, he brought the broadsword down on the nearest one’s head and watched it explode into tiny globules of gore with the same level of violence and destruction a shotgun shell might cause. Kylo hefted the weapon with an exhilarating thrill. He’d been younger and smaller the last time he’d tried swinging this around; it had been much harder then.

It was dull of course; Leia would have never allowed a _sharpened_ sword of any sort in her home, no matter how ‘supportive’ she’d been of Kylo’s ‘eccentric hobbies.’ Still, he’d so thoroughly destroyed the once-upon-a-time preacher’s skull, there was nothing left for the sword to get stuck in. He shifted his weight, muscles falling into familiar poses even though they protested his lack of practice, and took out two more. He kicked the fourth down the stairs while Phasma bludgeoned the fifth with the butt of the rifle, and then they were hurling themselves into the jeep and peeling away just as the swarm started to make its way around the corner of the house.

For a long time, there was no sound but the engine, the screaming tires, and the two of them gasping for breath.

When the house was far behind them, and Kylo finally had enough of his brain back to twist in his seat and try to wipe the blood off the sword, Phasma turned and looked at him, eyes dangerously locked on his face rather than the road.

“A _sword.”_

“I was a weird kid,” Kylo grunted defensively.

“ _Swords.”_

“Worked, didn’t it?”

Phasma laughed once. Then again. Then she dissolved in half hysterical chuckles as the road ribboned away beneath them.

 

~~~

 

“We’re fucked,” Phasma complained, voice pitched low in the shadow of the forest.

“You said that already,” Kylo grunted, back turned to her as he pissed on a pine tree.

Phasma spit in reply as Kylo zipped himself back into his jumpsuit. When she heard him swing his sword back over his shoulder, she turned around to face him.

“We’re not fucked,” Kylo drawled, voice as close to gentle as it ever got with him. “We haven’t seen anyone or anything for miles, so there are worse places we could have broken down. And we’re surrounded by cars,” he added, pointing behind him to the interstate peppered with unused vehicles. “If we can surround the Jeep, barricade ourselves in--”

“We’ve got enough food for four days,” Phasma interrupted. “And our only mode of transport is totally fucked. Last time I checked neither one of us is a mechanic.”

Kylo shrugged his huge shoulders and shoved his hair out of his eyes, giving her one of his long, impenetrable stares as he did so. “I’ll take a look at it.”

Phasma blinked at him. After two months on the road, she still hadn’t stopped being surprised whenever Kylo surprised her. After two months on the road, she hadn’t stopped being surprised he wasn’t dead yet. She’d known from the start, from the first day she ever spoke to him, that he wasn’t the same kind of big and stupid as most of the cons she worked with. She’d had to find ever increasingly complex ways of manipulating him that she’d never had to use with other inmates and it wasn’t until she let him out of his cage that she realized he’d never been manipulated at all. He’d always known exactly what he wanted from her and what she wanted from him and he’d always bided his time until she offered it up on her own. From the very start, she’d expected to use him as little more than cannon fodder and from the very start, he’d refused to be used at all.

“You’ll ‘take a look at it,’” she drawled.

Kylo shrugged again and turned his back to her to stalk back to the smoking Jeep. He was still wearing his Belsavis jumpsuit. The bright orange was faded and dirty, and the huge blade strapped to his back covered up most of the block print identifying him as a homicidal psychopath, but it was still painfully clear Kylo wasn’t an ordinary citizen. She’d tried to convince him to change-- if they ever encountered _people_ out here, Kylo’s stature alone might be enough to get them killed on sight. She didn’t want to think too hard about what would happen if anyone actually recognized him. But he’d refused, after that first night, to wear anything else if he could help it. He’d given her all sorts of reasons-- it was more comfortable than the clothes that didn’t quite fit him, the thicker fabric was more protective without being overly warm, it was easier to care for a single jumpsuit than the other clothes they’d stockpiled in the Jeep. But Phasma suspected old habits just died hard. When they found a place to bathe, if she so much as moved out of earshot, Kylo still emerged from his cleansing routine white faced with his hands visibly shaking. It would have annoyed her, except that it made him dependant on her and as long as he was dependant on her, she didn’t have to worry about waking up on fire.

She followed him back to the Jeep, ears perpetually perked for any movement not their own. Kylo popped the hood and peered curiously into the machine’s innards, dark eyes horribly intense and focused. At first, Phasma just watched him skeptically, but then he frowned and reached into the engine. The smoke stopped pooling out and Phasma remembered exactly how Kylo had landed himself in Belsavis to begin with. A car engine probably didn’t pose much of a threat to him.

“Check the glove box for a manual,” he told her brusquely.

Phasma didn’t bother arguing with him; he was commanding and bossy by nature and nothing she said had ever changed that. He hadn’t dared talk back to her like this when he’d been locked up; times had certainly changed. Instead, Phasma retrieved the manual, dropped it on the ground at his feet, and started patrolling.

 

The southern sun was too hot. By noon, Phasma was dripping sweat, and when she marched back to the Jeep to check on Kylo, she found him with the sleeves of his jumpsuit tied around his waist, sweating through the once-white A-shirt he wore underneath.

“Kylo.” He grunted without turning his head, leaning deep into the Jeep’s engine. “Something’s wrong with this place.”

“Something’s wrong with the whole damn world, babe,” he replied. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and left a greasy black slick behind. Phasma hissed in annoyance at the pet name.

“Look at all these cars,” she told him, motioning around even though he couldn’t see her. “I’ve only found a few corpses; this place should be crawling with infected.”

Kylo shrugged. “Maybe someone came through and lead them all away.”

“Or maybe they’re not far off,” Phasma insisted, “And if we’re still here at nightfall, we’ll get fucking swarmed.”

“I don’t plan to be here at nightfall,” Kylo replied, yanking something black and covered in dust out of the engine. “Found the problem,” he told her, dropping the part into her hand. Phasma stared at it dimly. Kylo rolled his eyes, “So,” he said deliberately. “We just find this in one of these cars and then go on our merry fucking way.”

There was another problem.

As Phasma and Kylo began checking all the closest vehicles for the part Kylo had extracted, they both realized very quickly that all these machines had been picked clean. In some cases, entire engines had been removed, and the hoods carefully closed again to appear as if the car had never been touched.  

After finding maybe the twentieth car they checked in such a state, Kylo lifted his head and peered into the woods with an animal focus that gave Phasma chills; a wolf scenting the wind.

“Someone’s here,” he said quietly, and Phasma felt an awful thrill shoot through her chest. Kylo had spoken those words like a hunter spotting a deer. He wasn’t excited; he wasn’t scared. He was hungry.

All the muscles in his arm bulged as he swung his sword from his back and held it one handed while he shrugged back into his jumpsuit. Phasma would never get used to seeing him swing that ridiculous hunk of metal like a Viking berserker. He’d sharpened it in the days since he’d first retrieved it; the case he’d shoved into Phasma’s arms had held smaller blades, and all the tools required to bring them to a glistening edge. As a child, Kylo had explained, he’d had one particular interest born of a single fencing class his father had unloaded him onto when he was eight years old. And though swordsmanship was a dying art in general, it seemed enough money could find experts willing to teach just about anything. Now, he always carried the broadsword across his back, and a small Japanese affair that he called a ‘wakizashi’ at his hip. As ridiculous as it sounded, Phasma had seen him cleave a lurcher in two with one swing after he sharpened them both. She’d stopped teasing him for his choice of weapons after that.

Kylo crouched into a full on creep and started inching toward the forest, eyes on the ground.

“What are you--”

“Shh. Just stay back and cover me.”

Phasma clicked the safety off her pistol and complied. Kylo always put himself at the head of their little scouting party; suited her just fine.

First, Kylo crept along the edge of the road and the forest, staring hard at the ground. When he finally turned into the woods, close to what had been Exit 59, she couldn’t tell what had triggered his change in course.

She followed him for at least thirty minutes before they found a chain link fence, torn open wide enough to easily step through. Beyond the fence was a low slung concrete building built into the side of a massive tree-covered hill.

Phasma stared at the building and practically salivated; it looked to be a perfect shelter.

“Shit,” Kylo said suddenly, pointing into the tree closest to the fence. Phasma followed his gaze and saw a tiny red light blinking away at the hole they’d just walked through. “Someone’s watching us.”

“A _camera?”_ Phasma hissed. That meant the building had to have power.

Kylo wordlessly started inching back along, keeping his feet in what Phasma soon realized was a little trail weaving through the thick carpet of leaves.

“Step up,” Kylo commanded softly, pointing down. Phasma followed his gesture and saw a thin silver wire, nearly invisible, stretched across the path.  

“Who the fuck lives here?” Phasma muttered.

Kylo adjusted his grip on his sword and said grimly, “Someone dangerous.”

They continued creeping along and just before they rounded the corner of the building, which they’d approached in a zigzaging sort of way through the trees, Kylo froze again. “I dunno what that is,” he said softly, pointing to a tiny piece of metal stuck to one of the trees. Phasma shrugged, and watched Kylo duck low, unwilling to cross the path of the little scrap. Phasma waited for him to inch ahead a few steps and then followed, ducking just as he had.

A snapping branch like a gunshot rent the air. Phasma jerked around, aiming her gun, as Kylo brought his sword whistling in front of him. A single lurcher stumbled through the trees, and Phasma squeezed off one shot before she could think better of it. The lurcher collapsed, dead, a bullet through its forehead, and Phasma realized with an awful rush that she was standing in the path of the metal scrap pinned to the tree. A red dot of light speckled the skin on her arm.

“Ky-!”

Before she could get the word out, a hydraulic whoosh sounded through the strange clearing. Phasma threw herself backward, and with a wordless gasp, Kylo disappeared into the ground.

  
~~~

 

Kylo hit the ground with a huge grunt as every ounce of air in his lungs was knocked from his body. He lay in stunned silence, chest spasming as he tried to inhale, and a high pitched snarl cut the awful, artificial silence. Instinct made him raise his hands, try to block his face, and the half eaten skull of an infected leapt into his line of sight. Before he could roll away, it latched onto his wrist, slavering and chomping, and Kylo gasped wordlessly like a fish on dry land before he unsheathed the wakizashi at his hip and drove it again and again and again into the rotten temple.

When the thing went fully limp, Kylo kicked it away, breathing heavily, and realized with an awful, sinking disbelief that his wrist was throbbing. He drew back his sleeve, and stared at the bleeding crescent shaped gash in his skin and heard nothing but a terrible pounding in his head.

“Are you alright?” Phasma called, inching into sight at the top of the weird hole Kylo had dropped into. Kylo yanked his sleeve back down.

“Fine. Gimme your hand.” He reached up for her, and she adjusted herself at the lip of the square before she too extended her arm.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

They both jolted away from the edge, peering around in rabbit-like terror, as a cool, clipped English voice radiated with a tinny electronic whine from the hole Kylo was stuck in.

“Who the fuck said that?” Phasma demanded.

Kylo thrust his hand back up, heart clamoring in his chest and a mounting fury tunneling his vision. “Phasma. Get me the fuck out of this goddamn hole right now.”

“Your friend has been infected, I'm afraid. I don't recommend removing him from my trap.”

“He-- what?” Phasma spat, looking around.

Kylo slammed the flat of his palm furiously against the concrete wall. “Phasma!”

Phasma peered down at him.

“Phasma, I swear to fuck--” Kylo growled.

With a slightly apologetic look, Phasma drew back from the edge.

“Phasma!” Kylo screeched again, every ounce of calm he'd been clinging to shattering like hot glass. “You fucking bitch, you worthless cunt, I'll kill you, I swear to fuck, do you hear me, I'll slit your goddamn throat--”

“A wise choice, miss.”

“Phasma!”

With another hydraulic whoosh, a door above Kylo slid shut, plunging him into total darkness, and his furious threats did little more than bounce around in the deafening silence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo I know I said I'd update this one more slowly, but I had the second chapter on deck and figured why wait? Thank you guys so much for your encouragement on the first chapter! It sustains and motivates me tbh; I can't wait to write more for you! 
> 
> And of course-- all my love and thanks to Ajax and KTC for helping me plot this and helping me with the editing process. You guys. I don't deserve you. <3

Phasma frowned at the heavy metal hatch that closed over Kylo’s livid screams. He was raging and thrashing, slamming his hands against the wall and calling her some of the worst names she’d ever been called in her life. A tiny chill shot down her spine as she straightened and looked around for the voice that had warned her; Ben Solo losing his temper in general was a terrifying prospect on it’s own, but Phasma wasn’t sure she’d ever seen or heard Kylo so furious. Those weren’t idle threats he was throwing around. He meant every word he screamed. She was very glad there was a thick sheet of metal between the two of them because if he got his hands on her right now, she’d have to kill him just to stay alive. 

“If you step around the corner you will find the entrance to the compound open and waiting.” 

Phasma didn’t bother looking for the speakers. Instead, she followed instructions and found a single door with a huge metal lock. When she approached, the lock audibly clicked and the door swung open. 

She kept her pistol drawn, but she was more curious than cautious as she stepped into the dimly lit room. Excluding the few radio broadcasts that had existed in the very beginning, she hadn’t heard another human voice since leaving half the population of Belsavis locked in their cells. 

A blast of cool air hit her and the strangest combination of deja vu and vertigo made her head spin. The Jeep’s AC had broken weeks ago, and every building they had snuck into was stiff with stagnant, unmoving air. Air conditioning was a luxury Phasma had stopped thinking about, stopped expecting, stopped wishing for. It had only been two months but already so many things she’d taken for granted were little more than daydreams now. 

The door behind her clicked shut and she jumped, jerking the pistol back up to guard herself. 

“You may leave your weapons in the open lock box,” the brusque voice continued in apparent disinterest. “And please remove your clothing as well to ensure you’ve not been infected.” 

Phasma snorted loudly. “Fuck you, perv.” 

“I assure you, miss,” the voice continued snidely, “You have nothing I am interested in. If you’d like to continue further into the compound, you will follow my instructions.”

“I don’t know you at all. I’m not leaving my weapons.”

“I suppose you may retain that baton there, but I won’t allow firearms inside. If these terms are not suitable, please inform me so that I may unlock the outer door and you can be on your way.” 

Grumbling to herself, Phasma turned her head and found a single lock box among many open and waiting for her. She obediently deposited the pistol and the rifle inside; the ammo however, far more valuable than the guns themselves, was left in the oversized pocket she had looped to her belt. She closed the door and turned, and found the camera that she assumed the English prick was using to spy on her with.

“And your clothes,” he said in total boredom. Phasma scowled. “The other option,” the voice continued, “would be quarantine. If you’d like I can lock you in this room for the next two days until I’m sure you’re healthy. Or you can, of course, leave.” 

With a furious scowl, Phasma started stripping. This had to be karma, she mused. She’d done the same thing to Kylo the first time she’d seen him after the outbreak after all. 

The voice walked her through a series of only slightly humiliating poses designed to reveal her skin to be completely free of bites, and then said professionally, “Very well. You may dress and enter through the yellow door to your left. You will follow the hallway to the end, take a right through the gray door, and then enter the third room. Proceed.” 

The hallways were long and sterile, with multi-colored, but unlabeled doors. Phasma felt like she’d stepped into some strange time warp as she walked; she’d found the place that existed between the world as it had been and the world as it was. Her heart was humming in her chest. She had no idea what she would find when she reached the room she’d been directed to, but it had certainly occurred to her that it might not be entirely benevolent.  

She had her baton in her hand when she found the door. She pushed it open cautiously, and stepped through. 

It was painfully bright inside, with white overhead fixtures filling every corner of the room with light. The walls were white, the floors a light gray, and every conceivable surface sparkled with gleaming computer equipment. Phasma gaped and the door behind her clicked shut.

The only splash of color belonged to an incredibly red head positioned in front of a stack of computer monitors. The man in question was tall (as tall as Kylo, Phasma guessed) but very thin with pale, freckled skin, and a pristine white lab coat. When the door shut, he turned his head, and Phasma saw a porcelain mask of a face that made her skin crawl. The man glanced at her with such pure disinterest, Phasma thought instantly of her least favorite doctor at Belsavis. He’d always looked at the prisoners as worms waiting to be dissected. This man had the same look about him, under his gorgeous skin and cold blue-green eyes. 

“Please take a seat on that table,” he said clearly with a short motion to a padded examination bed. 

Phasma raised her brows. “No.” 

The man paused. He was typing with long, lithe fingers. “I insist on conducting a physical, miss,” he said without turning his head. “Please sit down.” 

“Phasma.” 

With a put upon sigh, the man stood and turned fully to face her. He looked completely untouched by the world they lived in now. His face was clean shaven, his hair perfectly parted. He didn’t look sunburned, or drawn, or hungry. In fact, he was incredibly pretty. The moment Phasma had the thought, she looked at him just a bit closer and recognized a certain quality in the way he was standing, in the way he was looking at her, that told her, more so than his words earlier, that she had absolutely nothing he was interested in. 

“Excuse me?”

“My name is Phasma. Don’t call me ‘miss.’”

“Very well, ‘Phasma,’” he said with a delicate sniff. “Please sit down.” 

“Who are you?”

The man rolled his eyes with a resigned sigh. “My name is Armitage Hux. I’m an MD and perfectly qualified to conduct a physical.” 

“Why?” she demanded waspishly. “You know I’m not infected.” 

“On the off chance that you  _ become  _ infected,” Dr. Hux said slowly and clearly, “I should like to have a baseline of your current state of health for comparison.” 

Phasma just stared at him. 

Dr. Hux rolled his eyes again and then pointed to, of all things, a mini-fridge positioned in a corner near the door. “Or have a soda first I suppose,” he breezed, turning back to his monitors. 

Phasma didn’t need to be told twice. As she ripped open the door to the fridge, she heard Dr. Hux begin to speak. “Does anyone in your family have a history of heart disease?”

Phasma started to tell him she had no idea, but then a stream of curses and insults echoed around the room and Phasma realized the doctor was speaking into a microphone routed to Kylo’s new prison. When she turned to look at him, he eyed her dolefully. 

“He’s a very pleasant fellow, isn’t he?” 

Phasma snorted. “You locked him in a hole.” 

“Surely he understands the necessity?” 

“Oh surely,” she drawled, popping the tab on the soda. “Doesn’t mean he likes it.” 

“What’s his name?”

“Ben Solo. Probably wants you to call him Kylo though.” 

“Kylo,” Hux mused. He turned back to look at his monitors, and Phasma realized the green glow was Kylo, thrashing and stomping around the little room he’d been locked in. “Belsavis,” Hux said, suddenly loud. “He’s wearing a Belsavis uniform?”

Phasma snorted again, and then burped from all the fizz in her soda. It had been so long since she’d had one cold. “You don’t recognize him, do you?”

“Should I?”

Phasma shrugged. “I guess we’re far enough south,” she murmured. “Where we’re from there’s no one who doesn’t know his name.”

“He’s a criminal?” Hux pressed. 

Phasma settled onto the table he’d asked her to sit on and got comfortable. She had a story to tell, after all. “Oh, yeah, I’d say so. I was a correctional officer at Belsavis. Worked there for years. So you can trust me when I say Ben Solo is one of the scariest mother fuckers I’ve ever met.” 

Hux narrowed his eyes at her. “Then why is he with you?”

“It was convenient. Honestly, I didn’t think he’d last this long.” 

“Very well,” Hux sighed. “What did he do?”

Phasma gave Hux a salacious grin. “He tried to blow up his dad’s plane. Guess he had some kinda beef with Daddy Solo; they were never able to figure out exactly what his motive was and he never told anyone. But see, his dad, he was this pilot. So Kylo there decides the best way to take him out is to rig his plane to catch fire once he reaches a certain altitude.”

Hux crossed his arms and leaned against the table with all his computer monitors, one eyebrow cocked in barely held interest. 

“What he didn’t plan on, however, was Daddy Solo taking his brother-in-law and his daughter, and nine of her little friends along for the ride. Apparently,” she went on, pausing to take a swig from her soda, “Uncle what’s-his-name was some kinda teacher or something. He and Daddy Solo were taking these kids camping in the mountains for the weekend, I guess, fuck if I know. Anyway, Kylo’s little rig worked like a charm. The plane-- it was one of those little fuckers, only holds like fifteen people or some shit-- well it hit the right altitude, and the cabin starts filling with smoke.” Phasma finished her soda and popped a tab on the second she’d grabbed. 

“I guess he didn’t plan for anyone actually being in the cabin-- something about Daddy Solo usually flying this plane by himself. Well, the kids tell them the plane’s on fire, so he lands it. Gets it down in time so everyone in the cockpit-- Dad, Uncle, and Cousin-- they all make it out okay, for the most part.” Phasma paused and was glad to see both of Hux’s eyebrows had risen in something like disbelief. “Not the kids though. The smoke got to ‘em. Uncle whoever tried to get the oxygen masks on ‘em apparently, but…” Phasma shrugged. “All nine kids died. Uncle lost an arm,” she added as an afterthought. “Got burnt all to shit. Cops said if the kids hadn’t been there, the whole cabin would have filled with smoke before Daddy Solo ever knew anything was wrong. Said the plane would have fallen out of the sky and they probably wouldn’t have been able to tell it was sabotaged at all. Pretty fucked, right? If it weren’t for all those kids, he would have gotten away with it.” 

Hux considered her for a long moment, and Phasma swigged her soda again. 

“How exactly did he rig the plane then?”

Phasma shrugged. “How should I know?” 

Hux wordlessly turned and started typing again, and Phasma felt her temper flare. “They think he’s done more too, started a bunch of fires around his hometown, but they could never get enough evidence together.” 

“Yes, he sounds like a very bad man,” Hux drawled. “Fortunate for us, I suppose, that he is now a very dead man.” 

 

~~~

 

The room was tiny, no bigger than the cell Kylo had lived in for the last ten years. The ground was concrete, but it was covered in dirt and leaves, dropped inside by the sliding trap door above him, he supposed. 

It reeked of rot and death. The body in the corner had started to decompose long before Kylo had bashed its skull in, and the second he stopped screaming every curse he knew and took a big, gasping breath, he was very nearly sick. He wrenched his arm over his nose and stuck close enough to the wall that he could lay his hand against it. His sword was on the floor somewhere, hidden in the darkness and waiting for him to trip over. It was pitch black in here and Kylo hated it. 

“Mr. Solo, do you have a history of diabetes in your family?” 

“Suck a dick,” Kylo bellowed back. Why was this fucker asking him about his family’s  _ medical history?  _

He had to get out of this hole. He’d spent a third of his life in a cell and he didn’t plan on dying in one. Not anymore. 

“I’m not telling you shit,” he bellowed. “Open the goddamn door. You can’t keep me in here!”

“Unfortunately,” came the deliciously prim voice, “I’m afraid I must. I am sorry you were caught by my trap, Mr. Solo. But you’ve been infected. Please try to understand that you offer a unique opportunity to fully observe the Virulent in their transformatory stage. No matter how much you threaten and rage--” The voice dropped in volume and temperature, became so chilly, and so hard, Kylo suddenly knew there was not a thing he could say to change this man’s mind. “You will not be leaving this room.”

Kylo hammered his fist against the wall with a furious, wordless shout, an awful helplessness filling his chest. Had he ever heard a man so thoroughly sure of himself? 

“I suggest you make yourself comfortable,” the voice went on, “and cooperate. You are not going to enjoy the next forty eight hours. Best you save your strength.” 

“Who the hell are you?” Kylo demanded, putting his back to the wall and peering into the darkness. 

“My name is Hux. I’m a scientist. Since the outbreak, I have dedicated myself to understanding the Infection more fully. Please understand, Mr. Solo, that while I take no particular pleasure in your demise, your death does afford us, as I said, a very unique opportunity. Perhaps history will remember you fondly, if I am able to glean a new understanding of the Virus from observing you over the next several weeks.” 

“Weeks?” Kylo spat bitterly. 

“You did kill my previous subject,” the voice replied snidely. “But seeing as how I can observe the earliest stages of the Virus as a result, I suppose it all works out in the end.” 

“Fuck you,” Kylo growled, low in his throat. Every inch of his skin was tingling with rage, every joint, every bone craving action. Except there was no action to take. If he didn’t calm himself down, he was going to break his hands on the walls. 

“Very well, we shall strike a deal. If you answer my questions-- truthfully-- I will make your, um, shall we say your  _ stay  _ here more comfortable.” 

“Comfortable?” Kylo parroted back. “Open the fucking door and we can talk about comfortable.” 

“I shall turn on the light, for one,” Hux went on as if Kylo hadn’t spoken at all. “I can provide you with food and water. I can even adjust the temperature. I’m sure it’s a bit warm at the moment; I was studying the effects of decomposition on a still ambulatory body. It’s fascinating stuff, if I do say so.” 

“No,” Kylo ground out, sinking to the floor and crossing his arms over his chest. He took a shuddering breath and felt himself shaking in the tips of his fingers. 

“Pardon?”

“No. No heart disease, no diabetes. We’re all pictures of health, alright?” 

“Do you have a history of migraines?”

“Yeah,” Kylo grumbled. “With auras,” he added. 

“Are you on any medication for those?”

“No. Just. Try not to drink too much caffeine.” 

“Very good, thank you.” The room was, for one moment, horribly silent, and then Hux came back on the loudspeaker. “Can you describe your current state of health?”

“Fit as a fucking fiddle,” Kylo drawled. He heard Phasma chuckle over the speaker, followed by a sly, “You got that right.” They both ignored her. 

“Any autoimmune disorders?”

“No.”

“Allergies?”

“No.”

“Sexually transmitted diseases?”

“No!” Kylo snapped. “What the fuck.” 

“Obviously I have to ask, Mr. Solo. I imagine condoms are not particularly easy to come by in Belsavis.” 

He was taunting Kylo, his snide voice thick with amusement. Kylo slammed his palm into the wall and the spark of flat, dull pain that shot through his arm took away some of the throbbing itch under his skin.

“You better hope I don’t get out of this hole,” Kylo hissed furiously. “Otherwise I’ll show you exactly what a rat like you would get in  _ Belsavis.”  _ He mimicked Hux’s posh accent, drew out each syllable, and was satisfied when the loudspeaker picked up an annoyed  _ hmph  _ on Hux’s end. 

He proceeded to take Kylo through a long list of increasingly more obscure medical questions and Kylo answered as truthfully as he could, though he loathed every second of it. 

After his last question (“Were you given fluoride treatments as a child?”), he flipped the light on.

Kylo blinked against the fluorescent white glare and then immediately peered around the room, looking for a method of escape. 

It was no bigger than the average jail cell, and just as sturdily constructed, with gray cinder block walls and a cold concrete floor. There were two huge double doors, flanked by simple workshop style lights, and a camera high in the corner of the room. A paint-chipped shadow against one wall told Kylo that stairs used to be here, leading out of the doors in the ceiling. A cellar then. 

When he peered up at the doors above him, he almost wasn’t sure what he was seeing. They’d clearly been rigged to open as they had. Kylo recognized several missing pieces of the engines they’d checked among the incomprehensible jumble of parts. 

The floor was covered in dirt, leaves, and blood. The body in the corner wasn’t nearly far enough away. His broadsword was on the ground in the middle of the room and he double checked it for damage before he unstrapped the sheath from his back. As he was sheathing the sword and leaning it in the corner, he heard a single amused chuckle crackle over the loudspeakers. 

“Something funny?” he snapped. 

“That’s a novel way to deal with the Virulent. I suppose a brute like you doesn’t have too much trouble flailing around with that thing.”

“Unlock the door and I’ll show you what I can do with it,” Kylo spit furiously. He didn’t actually stand up from the floor though. 

He was going to die here. 

 

~~~

 

“History of heart disease?”

“No idea,” Phasma sighed. Hux had been poking and prodding her for the last ten minutes. When Hux just looked at her with one eyebrow raised, Phasma grudgingly went on, “Parents died when I was young. No idea what illnesses they had.” 

Hux still insisted on taking her through his entire fucking list. She answered what she could but he had to leave most of his little boxes blank. 

“Have you ever--” 

Hux went deadly still when a sudden sharp hiss of pain echoed from his computer console. He turned his head, pretty crystal eyes narrowing, and then left her without another word. Phasma followed him curiously back to his desk. He’d left the speaker in Kylo’s cell on, but not the microphone, so they could hear him, but he couldn’t hear them. 

When Phasma peered at Hux’s computer screen, she saw Kylo sitting in the corner farthest from the body that was still there. He was sitting cross legged, like a yogi, with his hands on his knees, and his eyes closed, but his hands were clenched into fists and his jaw was tight. He was breathing through his nose. 

Hux punched a few keys on his computer and the picture zoomed in; with the light on, it was a very high-def image. Phasma could see sweat on Kylo’s brow. 

“What is he doing?” Hux mused. 

“Fucking yoga? How should I know?” Phasma returned. 

“He’s never done this before?” 

“He stretches and works out most days,” Phasma told him. “Some kinda yoga bullshit and then something with his swords. But he’s not into that hippy meditation fuckery. At least I’ve never seen him do it.” 

“Does--”

Hux cut himself off when Kylo’s face twitched and he jerked forward once before straightening back into his pose, taking a careful breath, and going still again. 

Hux pressed a button. “Kylo, what are you feeling?” 

Kylo’s lips curled, but his eyes stayed closed. Phasma was sure he was going to tell Hux to shove his questions up his ass, but then his lips cracked apart like a fissure in stone and he hissed, “My Head. Fucking hurts.” 

Hux pulled back from the computer console. “It’s too soon.” 

“What?” Phasma demanded. 

“What kind of hurt?” Hux’s voice was excited, almost frantic. “A migraine?” 

“Something else,” Kylo answered. “Shit, stop talking to me.” 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to meditate, you stupid piece of shit,” Kylo exploded, eyes finally opening. “What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?” His jaw slid. And then he leaned back, slammed his head once into the wall behind him, and sat back into his pose once more. 

“What does it  _ feel like,  _ Kylo?” 

Kylo cursed, loudly, fluently, and the sounds devolved into a wordless half shout. “Head’s cracking open. Something’s moving.” Hux stared at the screen in total, wordless confusion. “Ice pick. Behind my eyes.” 

“There it is,” Hux muttered. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Phasma exploded. Hux was all wound up, buzzing with energy and far too excited about the fact that Kylo was dying a little faster than everyone else had.

Hux turned and looked at Phasma once before he moved to a different computer and started typing. “He’s progressing much more rapidly than other subjects. And the sensations he’s describing are unique. The initial headache seems to mirror the symptoms of cluster headaches-- acute onset, with multiple sources comparing the pain to being struck by an icepick. The ‘movement’ is incredibly strange.” Hux fell silent as he typed. When he looked back at the screen, Phasma followed his gaze. 

Kylo was in ‘child’s pose’ now-- Phasma knew enough about that hippie dippie yoga nonsense to know what that one was called. He had his knees curled to his chest, forehead to the ground, and arms outstretched over his head. She could see him shaking. 

“Remarkable,” Hux mumbled absently, eyes locked on the screen like a cat watching a moth that was too far away to catch. 

“What?” 

“His pain response,” Hux told her, glancing at her over his shoulder before he looked back at Kylo. “He should be in too much pain to think straight right now, but he seems to be… controlling his physical reactions for the time being.” 

They watched Kylo tremble. They watched him grunt and fling his own head into the wall. They watched him pull his own hair and thump his chest with his fist and try to breathe steadily while he held himself still. 

And when he finally started to scream, Hux said grimly, “And there it is.” 

He sat down at the desk, eyes locked on the screen, and started taking notes. 

When Phasma couldn’t take the noise anymore, she left, went to explore the building. Every door was locked, so she sat in the hallway and counted the bricks in the walls. 

She wouldn’t mourn Ben Solo. Not really, for all she’d miss having that monster cock of his at her every beck and call. 

She wouldn’t mourn him. But she still didn’t want to listen to him die. 

 

~~~

 

He screamed for days. He screamed until his voice gave out and then he screamed some more. 

It didn’t help. 

 

~~~

 

“That’s it, I can’t fucking take it anymore, you have to let me do something, let me fucking shoot him.” 

“Do calm yourself, Phasma,” Hux snapped, voice a little hoarse and eyes bruised and tired. 

“How long are you going to let this go on?” she fumed. “Kylo’s a sonovabitch but  _ no one  _ deserves that!” Not to mention she could hear him in the room Hux had told her she could sleep in. “It’s been a  _ week.”  _

Hux shook his head, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Phasma had only seen him leave this room to use the bathroom. She hadn’t seen him sleep; she assumed he must have been sleeping in his lab, when she was sleeping too, but she’d never caught him so much as closing his eyes. He was a far cry from the perfect picture he had presented when she first met him. His hair was lank and dirty, his cheeks sunken and sallow. He looked dead on his feet. She had no idea how he was still standing. 

“He should be dead by now,” Hux whispered, almost to himself. “This is over three times as long as the usual incubation period.”

“Open the door,” Phasma demanded. “Open the door so I can put him out of his fucking misery, Jesus!” 

“No,” Hux spat. “Get out of my lab if you’re uncomfortable--”

“How long are you going to let him  _ suffer  _ like this?” 

“As long as it takes!” Hux exploded. 

“Can’t you give him something? Drugs. I’ve got-- I’ve got shit we can give him--”

“You’ll ruin the experiment!” 

“ _ Experiment?  _ He’s a fucking  _ man,  _ you animal, what kind of fucking bullshit--”

“If we drug him, we risk altering the progression of the virus,” Hux told her through clenched teeth. “We already know nothing  _ stops  _ the virus from spreading and killing the host, but drugs may slow it down, or otherwise effect how it reacts within the body. If I’ve any hope of finding the  _ solution  _ to this, this  _ nightmare,  _ I will need to collect as much information as I can about how the virus progresses in its  _ natural  _ state.” 

“You already said this isn’t natural!” 

“I know!” Hux spat. “Are you… are you  _ positive  _ he was clean? He wasn’t on anything?” 

“Yes,” Phasma repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. Hux hadn’t had time to collect Kylo’s blood before the symptoms started; he’d been harassing her about Kylo’s health ever since. “There’s no fucking way. He… smoked a little pot here and there, if we holed up somewhere real secure, but he didn’t go near the hard stuff, not once.” 

“This isn’t  _ pot,”  _ Hux ground out, running his hand through his filthy hair. 

The ravaged screams echoing from the speaker fell, as they sometimes did, into weak whimpers, and sighing to himself, Hux picked up the microphone. 

“Are you still with us, Kylo?” 

“You’re a fucking monster,” Phasma hissed. 

“Kylo? Can you answer me?”

“--Water,” came the harsh, scratched reply, hissing over top of Hux’s words. 

Hux frowned. “No one else--”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Phasma spat. She turned on her heel and stalked to the mini fridge, pulled out a bottle of water, and crossed back to the door. “Open it.” 

“Absolutely not.” 

“Hux, open the fucking door.”

“He could  _ infect you.”  _

“Then you’ll have two of us to study.” 

“This is a bad idea. And the tests--”

“It’s just  _ water. _ When was the last time he had something to  _ drink?”  _

Hux ground his teeth together. 

“Fine. But you’re going to collect blood samples.” 

“Fine.” 

He gave Phasma the supplies she’d need. And then he pressed a button. The door to the cell slid open, and Phasma stepped through. She had to wait in another room for the door behind her to close, and then the one in front of her opened. 

She gagged when the smell hit her. The dead infected in the corner was practically liquid by now, congealing on the floor. 

“Kylo.” 

He whimpered, tried to lift his head and couldn’t. He was facedown on the ground, hands curled limply in his sweat-soaked hair. 

Phasma took one look at him and didn’t hesitate. She dropped down by his side, brushed the hair out of his face, and tilted the bottle to his lips. He took a few weak sips, water dribbling down his chin, and Phasma said, “He’s burning up.” 

“Fevers are normal,” Hux told her over the speaker. “Are his pupils responsive?” 

Phasma used the penlight Hux had given her to check. “Yes.” Then she brushed her hand over Kylo’s back. “You’re a resilient motherfucker, you know that? You were supposed to die days ago.” 

“Can’t die.” Phasma was stunned when he actually responded. “Not without. Wringing both your throats first.” 

“Me?” Phasma said almost gently. “He’s the one who locked you in a hole and got you bit.” 

“Him first,” Kylo answered. 

“He wants me to draw blood.” Kylo didn’t respond to that. Phasma fed him more water, and then let Hux coach her through taking the samples, a strange nausea roiling in her stomach that had nothing to do with the dead body. She rushed from the room when it was time, both intensely relieved to be back behind the doors, and strangely loath to leave Kylo behind. He’d started screaming again, at the end. 

Hux looked at the samples under his microscope the second Phasma handed them to him. “What in bloody hell--”

“What?”

“These look like…”

“Hux, what is it?” 

“I… I can’t say yet,” Hux muttered. “I… need to run more tests.” 

“What is it?” she yelled. 

Hux lifted his head from the microscope and looked at her ruefully. “The virus appears to have… mutated.” 

“Mutated.” 

“At… at least some of it. The virus concentration is exactly what I would expect from someone… in his stage of progression, for all it seems to have stalled here. But some of them are… different.” 

“Different how?” 

“I don’t know,” Hux spat. “We need to--”

He fell silent. 

Phasma did too, and a chill ran up her spine. 

For the first time in days, Kylo was silent. Completely, utterly silent. 

The two of them rushed to the computer monitor at the same time. Kylo was still, curled into a ball on his side, and facing the camera. Hux zoomed in, panned the camera over his drawn, pale face. 

“Is he--” Phasma asked, relief flooding her chest. 

“No,” Hux said in awe. “He’s. He’s  _ sleeping.”  _

 

Hux paced for hours. Phasma dozed on one of his exam tables, and once, when he thought she was sleeping, she caught him shooting up. He glanced at her furtively and retrieved a syringe, a bottle, and various supplies from a drawer, keeping his back to her as he worked. She still watched him tie his arm off and expertly slide the needle into his veins without even a wince. She waited until he was pulling the needle out before she said, “You’re gonna have to sleep eventually.” 

“Eventually,” he replied testily, jerking his sleeve back down and putting his supplies away; his motions were suddenly sharp and annoyed. He was furious she’d caught him and she let her eyes drift closed again while she grinned at him. 

“Didn’t take you for a fucking meth head.” 

“It’s  _ not meth,”  _ he spat, affronted. 

“Looks like meth to me.” 

“If you  _ must know,”  _ Hux told her frostily, “It is an experimental stimulant we were testing at this lab.” 

“So you’re a lab rat now?” 

“It’s perfectly safe in moderation. I oversaw its creation myself.” 

“What exactly did you do here, Hux?” she asked him for what felt like the thousandth time. All the doors were locked. The place was a fortress-- nothing like she’d expect a typical lab to be. 

“Medical research,” he told her, also for the thousandth time, and nothing else. “We should move Mr. Solo while he is still asleep.” 

“What?” Phasma replied dumbly, off balance by the change in topic. She sat up a little on the exam table. 

“There are observational theaters in this facility that would allow us clearer visuals, and more control of his environment. I adapted that room as I did because I was unwilling to get close enough to a Virulent to transport them to one of these rooms. I was considering ways in which to move Mr. Solo without having him tear our heads off when he progressed to the next stage of the illness. If he’s unconscious, we should attempt to move him now.” 

“And if he wakes up?” 

Hux frowned grimly. “I will provide you with one of your pistols.” 

Phasma considered. Hux hadn’t returned any of her weapons since she’d first set foot in the building. “I need different clothes,” she said finally. “Something that’s harder to bite through. Like his jumpsuit.” She’d been wearing various sweatpants and sweat-stained tank tops for weeks now. 

“Smart,” Hux told her. “I can provide that.” 

They came up with a plan. Hux had strange white jumpsuits for them to wear-- like hazmat suits without the bulk. They crinkled a little when they moved, but the material was sturdy. Along with the suits, Hux retrieved a gurney and backboard, with abnormally thick leather straps. And he put a few capped syringes in his pockets. 

They worked quickly after that, suddenly afraid that Kylo would wake up. Phasma’s heart was pounding when they opened the door to Kylo’s cell once more. Hux gagged at the stench and Phasma muttered, “Yeah, you left him in here with that, you shit.” 

“What would you have had me do?” he demanded, as they wheeled the gurney into the room. Kylo didn’t budge. Hux still dropped to his knees and injected something into his neck. 

“I thought you said you couldn’t give him anything?” Phasma demanded, accusatory. It was her job, being the stronger of the two of them, to get Kylo onto the backboard. She made short work of it, and Hux focused on strapping down his legs while Phasma adjusted the ones at his chest. 

“The safety of the researchers supersedes the integrity of the experiment,” Hux told her. “And we have already determined that he is an  _ outlier.  _ We can’t fully trust his reactions to any of this as average at the moment.”

“Thought the pursuit of knowledge was more important than personal safety with you scientist tits.” 

“Not when I am the only one alive who can still conduct the research,” Hux answered. Phasma looked at him. Did he think there were no other scientists left studying the virus? There  _ had  _ to be, somewhere. There had to be more people like them. “On three. One, two--”

They lifted the backboard onto the gurney, sparred a moment to secure it, and then left the room just as quickly as they came. 

 

“Well?” 

Hux stared into his microscope in silence. 

“Hey. Brainiac. Gimme a fucking clue here.” 

“I… I need to run more tests.” 

And when he was done, he just turned and looked at her in total, bewildered awe. 

“I need you to give me a blood sample.” 

“Why?” she replied suspiciously. 

“I… I can’t be sure, but I think…”

“Spit it out.” 

“I think… I think the virus has stabilized.” 

“What the fuck does that mean?” 

“I suspect that he may no longer be contagious,” Hux told her, voice breathy and high pitched, too excited to be truly cautious but obviously playing at it. “I’ve tested the virus as it exists in his bloodstream against my own samples, but obviously--”

“Yeah, I know, you need more test subjects or whatever, fucking scientific method bullshit.” 

Phasma let him draw her blood. The room was silent for a long time as he dropped a dot of Kylo’s blood, and then Phasma’s, onto a slide. He broke the silence with a single sharp exhale and then spoke. 

“This is remarkable,” Hux said, matter-of-fact, as if this was the most  _ unremarkable  _ thing he had ever seen. And then he moved very quickly. He gathered an IV and bag, a few other supplies, and crossed into the more secure room where they had left Kylo strapped to the gurney. 

“What are you doing?” Phasma wondered aloud, trotting after him. 

“I believe he’s stabilized,” Hux responded in a breathless rush. “And no longer contagious. I hope. I need more samples. But first, we should get him hydrated. This man could hold the key to curing this nightmare and I’m not going to have him die of malnutrition on my examine table.” 

 

~~~

 

The first sensation he was aware of was one of a vast, unmoving emptiness, an awful, depthless ringing, a black, hollow void that consumed everything. 

It was his own head, brazenly empty when he was sure the scratching, clawing movement and pounding had driven him entirely mad. 

There was no pain. 

No pain.

For a time, he simply existed in that reality, the impossible world where his head wasn’t tearing itself from his shoulders, where the air didn’t stink of death, where--

Kylo opened his eyes, and closed them again, immediately. The overhead light was too bright. He winced, and groaned, and tried to rub his hand over his eye, but when he tried to lift it, it wouldn't move. 

Panic flared instantly. He yanked at his hands, at his feets, tried to lift his head--

“Woah, woah, lay still.” 

It was Phasma. 

_ Fucking Phasma,  _ who’d left him to die in a goddamn hole after  _ everything  _ he’d done for her--

_ “Unstrap me now.”  _

“We can’t,” came that prim English voice. “Not until I’ve finished running my tests. You should be dead.” 

“ _ Untie me!”  _ Something fell from a table across the room. Kylo heard it fall without realizing what it was. The light was too bright; he couldn’t see. “ _ Untie me.”  _

“We have to ensure you’re not a danger to us!” The doctor almost sounded like he was pleading. 

“I’ll show you what a fucking danger I am--”

“Kylo-”

Something fell again. Kylo ripped and tore and yanked at his bonds. He was tired. He was  _ so tired,  _ and thirsty and hungry and  _ weak  _ but he wasn’t going to stay strapped this fucking table, he  _ wasn’t-- _

The room shook and shuttered like an earthquake. Kylo barely noticed. 

“What the fuck was that?” Phasma shouted, jolting away from him. Kylo’s vision finally came into focus and he saw her looking down at him from across the room; she looked tired, pale, but unhurt. 

“ _ Let me go, let me go now, let me--”  _

The rumbling grew louder. No one moved to untie him. 

“My god,” Hux whispered. 

Kylo tore his hand free  _ somehow,  _ he wasn’t sure how, one moment he was tied and the next it was like the cuff had just  _ fallen  _ from his hand. 

“Hux,” Phasma whispered slowly as Kylo tore all the straps from his body. “What’s happening.” 

The room was shaking. Things were falling from the shelves. Glass shattered. 

When Kylo lifted his head, he found Phasma with a gun pointed at him from across the room, and the man who could only be Dr. Hux behind her. 

The sight of it drew him up short. They were both breathing heavily, looking at him in terror, or awe, and Kylo became aware all at once of the way the room had been shaking. The straps on the bed beside him were hovering in the air, drawn magnetically toward the ceiling, and when Kylo saw them, they all dropped to the table at once. 

“What the  _ fuck--” _

The words died on Kylo’s lips. More glass shattered. Kylo peered around the room and watched half a dozen pieces of lab equipment that had just been  _ floating  _ in the air crash to the ground. And a wave of fatigue washed over him so powerfully he fell to his knees. 

Phasma peered in stunned silence at Kylo and at the room. Kylo looked up at the ceiling, waited for the earthquake, for whatever the fuck was going on to come back, but it didn’t. He was so tired. 

Hux’s eyes were wide, manic,  _ overjoyed.  _ And without coming out from behind Phasma, he whispered, “My God. It  _ works.”  _

**Author's Note:**

> Visit me on [tumblr! ](https://ellabesmirched.tumblr.com/post/171154173463/virulent-ellabesmirched-elbell-star-wars)


End file.
